Stories, Reviews and Commentary

My Top Ten Comics of 2019

Today, I hit something of a landmark. With this year’s countdown, I’ve now been ranking my Top 10 Comics for 10 years. That’s a decade of great comics! The first list featured Scalped (crazy to think that was so long ago now!), which is now a solid contender for my all-time favourite comic. Are there any comics in this year’s lineup that could have the same staying power? It was certainly another fantastic year for comics. There are a couple of Marvel and DC entries in my list, and a variety of indie publishers are represented, along with some small press, too. Let’s take a look at my final top comics list of the 2010s!

BATMAN UNIVERSE

Tom King’s epic run on Batman reached its finale at the end of this year, and we had the usual wealth of Batman-related ongoings, minis and graphic novels alongside it. But my favourite Batman comic of the year was certainly Batman Universe. I knew instantly that I’d love this mini-series as soon as I saw that Nick Derington was on art duties. Anyone who follows the acclaimed Doom Patrol artist on Twitter will already have been well aware that he draws a killer Batman, and would have been clamouring to see him get a chance to tell a full story with the Caped Crusader. And paired with legendary colorist Dave Stewart, Derington gifted us with one of the best looking comics of the year. And then there’s the writing of Brian Michael Bendis, further demonstrating that the move across to DC has rejuvenated him and led to some of his best work in years. His time-and-space-hopping adventure showed that you can tell a Batman story that’s fun and light-hearted (and even letting Batman himself be charming and funny rather than brooding and sinister) while still feeling compelling and authentic.

SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN

I did not realise quite how much I’d missed Matt Fraction’s presence in comics until he returned to the limelight with this maxi-series about the Daily Planet’s beloved hotshot reporter Jimmy Olsen, reminding us all of what a fantastic storyteller he can be. This series seems to avidly follow the philosophy set out by Grant Morrison when developing his take on Jimmy for All Star Superman: rather than being a loser or a bore as so often portrayed, it would stand to reason that in order to stand as Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen would have to be pretty cool in his own right. And so here we get Jimmy Olsen: daredevil adventurer, master of disguise and endlessly resourceful investigative journalist, who also happens to be a goofball… but in an endearing way. The sprawling narrative is filled with tangents and strange asides, with us getting the sense it’s all coming together as one massive mystery (or story, in the journalistic lingo) taking shape. But the intricate plotting never comes at the expense of being consistently laugh-out-loud funny. And all of this isn’t even noting how beautiful it all looks with Steve Lieber drawing it! Not only is his Jimmy design spot-on, but the playing around he does with form on the page in certain standout sequences is jaw-dropping in its invention.

GIANT DAYS

Last year, Giant Days made its debut on the list, and I said the only reason it didn’t rank higher is because I was reading it in trade form, and so I was too far behind to give a fair summation of the actual content from 2018. Well, that applies once again in 2019, and given how the release of collections seems to have become more sporadic and I’m thus further behind on the series than I was at this time last year, it applies even moreso now, reflected in the book’s lower placement on the list. It’s certainly not a reflection on the book’s quality, which remains peerless. It’s still as funny, but the longer I read the series, the more its big strength is revealed to be the deepening attachment to the core ensemble of supremely likeable characters, heightened by the bittersweet knowledge that their time at university is approaching its close. Of course, for current readers, that close has arrived, with the series coming to an end. I look forward to seeing how the story ends in 2020, while part of me is also dreading having to say goodbye to Susan, Esther, Daisy, Ed, McGraw and co.

EAST OF WEST

Here’s another case of me repeating myself! Last year, I made a joke that, on the previous year’s list, I had remarked that East of West was coming to an end and would be finished by the following year, and yet due to delays it was still ongoing. And here I am, another year later, and even more delays have meant that East of West has still to reach its conclusion! Though with the last issue due out next New Comic Book Day, this will at last be the final time East of West appears on the list. Looking back at my #1 comics throughout the past decade, I feel quite sad that East of West never reached that #1 spot, with its highest ever placement being at #2. Because, by this point, East of West has featured on the majority of those lists, ranking more consistently than any other comic, and perhaps standing the test of time better than other, higher-ranking books from over the years. Once it’s over, Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin’s breathlessly ambitious apocalyptic sci-fi Western will surely enter the canon of all time great stories of the medium.

THE IMMORTAL HULK

Last year’s winner has dropped a bit in the standings in 2019, and yet that is no reflection on the comic’s quality, instead demonstrative of just how fantastic the five titles in the top half of the list are. The Immortal Hulk remains as great as ever. In its first year, Al Ewing and Joe Bennett (along with the occasional guest artist), subverted the superhero elements of The Hulk and gave us a series that leaned much more into horror. This year, they got even more ambitious, expanding the scope of the story into a cataclysmic, cosmic scale and engaging in some fascinating narrative experimentation. Some of the long-running storylines that had been in play since the beginning came to a dramatic conclusion around issue #24, and since then the comic has entered a new phase, with Bruce Banner and The Hulk newly liberated and empowered to enact their plan for the world, picking up an unlikely following among the angry and disenfranchised of the world, in a story rich in relevant socio-political allegory.

HOUSE OF SWEETS

I’ve loved House of Sweets since before it was even a comic. I first encountered the comic when it was just a script from Fraser Campbell, and it instantly established itself as one of the best scripts I’ve ever read, dense with heady, nightmarish terror. And it only got better when Iain Laurie, Dave Cooper and Colin Bell – the UK Comics Dream Team – came onboard to turn that brilliant script into a singular vision of horror and madness in comic book form. Playing like Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf spiked with a dash of Ari Aster’s Hereditary, this dread-laced tale of grown-up siblings revisiting their childhood holiday cabin in the woods, unaware that something dark and unnatural is waiting for them, is the only entry on the list not released by a major US publisher. At the time of writing, it’s crowdfunding on Kickstarter, and if you haven’t already, I couldn’t recommend jumping onboard enough.

ROAD OF BONES

One might consider me biased here, considering the artist on this project is none other than my Sink mucker Alex Cormack, and publisher IDW released this as part of a horror one-two punch followed up by my own Mountainhead. But whoever made this comic and whatever publisher released it, I’d have been singing its praises, considering that writer Rich Douek gave us one of the most powerhouse concepts of any story in any medium this year. It starts off rooted in very real historical horror, telling the story of desperate people imprisoned in the gulags of Stalinist Russia for dubious slights against the glorious leader. But once a trio of protagonists escape in the early going, the story curdles into something different, something even darker, a story of cannibalism, shifting allegiances, and dark forces lurking out in the cold and dark. And – much as it pains me to say it! – Alex Cormack does some of his career-best work bringing this grim, snow-swept world to life.

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN

It’s not been long since I sang the praises of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man at great length, so I won’t go too redundant in repeating myself here. But in what has been a vintage year for Spider-Man comics, with us gifted with an array of quality titles – Amazing Spider-Man, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, Superior Spider-Man, Ghost-Spider, Spider-Man: Life Story, Spider-Man: Full Circle and more – this one stood out as the very best. The best issues were the ones with the excellent Juann Cabal on art duties, but the consistent thread running through the entirety of the series was writer Tom Taylor, who injected Spider-Man with a warmth, kindness and relatable likeability better than just about anyone I can think of in recent years. The limited duration of this finished-too-soon gem of a series makes me think that it’ll surely soon be getting released as a big deluxe single volume. When it does, if you let this book go under your radar, I’d highly recommend correcting that error.

THESE SAVAGE SHORES

There was very little to separate the top two entries in my countdown, with both absolutely blowing me away and, in their own way, serving as stunning showcases of what comics are capable of. Here, we get an innovative twist on the vampire story, set against the backdrop of the East India Trading Company attempting to assert its influence over India in the 18th Century, with clashing cultures and ways of life juxtaposed with supernatural beings of different cultural lineages colliding. Vault Comics have been putting out quality titles since their formation, but These Savage Shores feels like the breakout publisher’s “killer app,” a potential flagship book that could be viewed as a pivotal comics text of the era, populated with indelible characters who feel instantly iconic, bolstered by the lush visuals and impeccable character design of Sumit Kumar. The plot that feels big and cinematic and yet also dense and literary in a way comics don’t always manage or even aspire to. Ram V blew me away last year with Grafitty’s Wall, and this is even better, Ram cementing his status as one of the best comic writers active today. He’s one marquee superhero run away from becoming an A-list superstar, if he’s even interested in such a thing: I’ve loved his dalliances in that terrain and would be keen to see more, but would be just as happy to see him continue to do distinctive original works like this.

HOUSE OF X / POWERS OF X

I’ve been part of comics online discourse for many years now, currently most prominently manifested in Comics Twitter. And one topic of conversation I’ve brought up plenty of times before is that, while in these online circles you’ll find heated discussion about the latest contentious comics topic, or the latest iteration of the soul-crushing artist VS writer debate, it’s rare for an actual comic itself to tap into the conversation zeitgeist, capturing that “appointment TV” vibe of bringing people together with each new instalment, buzzing over new developments and speculating over where it’s all going. But then Jonathan Hickman’s dizzyingly ambitious reinvention of the X-Men, realised in two overlapping minis in House of X and Powers of X, did just that. With the first issue, the concept of what the X-Men are is exploded, mutants re-established as the future of the world and the X-Men re-positioned less as superheroes than emissaries of a new world order. The second issue is a dizzying tour through a thousand years of history from the first moment Xavier conceived of his dream for mutantkind to the last dying embers of Earth where machines rule over what little remains. The third issue uses a simple but genius retcon to transform stalwart supporting player Moira MacTaggart into the most fascinating, vital figure in the whole X-mythos. And so the series continued, each week offering new shocks and revelations. House of X / Powers of X actually reminded me a lot of Watchmen, in both its structural intricacy and its deconstruction of longstanding genre tropes: in this case less superheroes in general than the well-worn tropes that have accumulated around the X-Men in particular. But where this stands apart from Watchmen is that, rather than being intended as a last word, this is a new beginning, establishing a blueprint that has launched a whole new line of X-Men comics and could shape the direction of the books for years to come. All while also acting as a complete, rewarding read and powerful statement on the X-Men.

As always, here’s the annual tally of the best-of-the-year winners, from 2011 through to now…

2010: Scalped

2011: Scalped

2012: The Underwater Welder

2013: The Manhattan Projects

2014: Southern Bastards

2015: Southern Bastards

2016: The Sheriff of Babylon

2017: Batman

2018: The Immortal Hulk

2019: House of X / Powers of X

And that’s a wrap on the year in comics, the decade in comics! Here’s to the next decade being just as filled with great books!